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  • Why do large IT projects tend to fail or have big cost/schedule overruns?

    - by Pratik
    I always read about large scale transformation or integration project that are total or almost total disaster. Even if they somehow manage to succeed the cost and schedule blow out is enormous. What is the real reason behind large projects being more prone to failure. Can agile be used in these sort of projects or traditional approach is still the best. One example from Australia is the Queensland Payroll project where they changed test success criteria to deliver the project. See some more failed projects in this SO question Have you got any personal experience to share?

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  • Great Programmer Productivity - Accounting for 10,000 fold difference?

    - by TheImpact
    "A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer." - Bill Gates Say there's a "great" software engineer and an "average" software engineer on the same team. How can you account for one engineer being 10,000 times more productive? I can't quite fathom this, given they're both taking on their share of features, bugs and investigations, and consistently deliver with quality. Would my description possibly justify them to be above "average"? "great"? In a corporation like Microsoft, what % of software engineers are "average"? What % "great"?

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  • Programming language features that help to catch bugs early

    - by Christian Neumanns
    Do you know any programming language features that help to detect bugs early in the software development process - ideally at compile-time or else as early as possible at run-time? Examples of well-known and effective bug-reducing features are: Static typing and generic types: type incompatibility errors are detected by the compiler Design by Contract (TM), also called Contract Programming: invalid values are quickly detected at runtime (through preconditions, postconditions and class invariants) Unit testing I ask this question in the context of improving an object-oriented programming language (called Obix) which has been designed from the ground up to 'make it easy to quickly write reliable code'. Besides the features mentioned above this language also incorporates other Fail-fast features such as: Objects are immutable by default Void (null) values are not allowed by default The aim is to add more Fail-fast concepts to the language. If you know other features which help to write less error-prone code then please let us know. Thank you.

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  • Your interesting code tricks/ conventions? [closed]

    - by Paul
    What interesting conventions, rules, tricks do you use in your code? Preferably some that are not so popular so that the rest of us would find them as novelties. :) Here's some of mine... Input and output parameters This applies to C++ and other languages that have both references and pointers. This is the convention: input parameters are always passed by value or const reference; output parameters are always passed by pointer. This way I'm able to see at a glance, directly from the function call, what parameters might get modified by the function: Inspiration: Old C code int a = 6, b = 7, sum = 0; calculateSum(a, b, &sum); Ordering of headers My typical source file begins like this (see code below). The reason I put the matching header first is because, in case that header is not self-sufficient (I forgot to include some necessary library, or forgot to forward declare some type or function), a compiler error will occur. // Matching header #include "example.h" // Standard libraries #include <string> ... Setter functions Sometimes I find that I need to set multiple properties of an object all at once (like when I just constructed it and I need to initialize it). To reduce the amount of typing and, in some cases, improve readability, I decided to make my setters chainable: Inspiration: Builder pattern class Employee { public: Employee& name(const std::string& name); Employee& salary(double salary); private: std::string name_; double salary_; }; Employee bob; bob.name("William Smith").salary(500.00); Maybe in this particular case it could have been just as well done in the constructor. But for Real WorldTM applications, classes would have lots more fields that should be set to appropriate values and it becomes unmaintainable to do it in the constructor. So what about you? What personal tips and tricks would you like to share?

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  • Using machine learning to aim mirrors in a solar array?

    - by Buttons840
    I've been thinking about solar collectors where several independent mirrors to focus the light on a solar collector, similar to the following design from Energy Innovations. Because there will be flaws in the assembly of this solar array, I am proceeding with the following assumptions (or lack thereof): The software knows the "position" of each mirror, but doesn't know how this position relates to the real world or to other mirrors. This will account for poor mirror calibration or other environmental factors which may effect one mirror but not the others. If a mirror moves 10 units in one direction, and then 10 units in the opposite direction, it will end up where it originally started. I would like to use machine learning to position the mirrors correctly and focus the light on the collector. I expect I would approach this as an optimization problem, optimizing the mirror positions to maximize the heat inside the collector and the power output. The problem is finding a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space (considering each mirror has 2 axis of rotation). Some of the problems I anticipate are: cloudy days, even if you stumble upon the perfect mirror alignment, it might be cloudy at the time noisy sensor data the sun is a moving target, it moves along a path, and follows a different path every day - although you could calculate the exact position of the sun at any time, you wouldn't know how that position relates to your mirrors My question isn't about the solar array, but possible machine learning techniques that would help in this "small target in a noisy high dimensional-space" problem. I mentioned the solar array because it was the catalyst for this question and a good example. What machine learning techniques can find such a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space? EDIT: A few additional thoughts: Yes, you can calculate the suns position in the real world, but you don't know how the mirrors position is related to the real world (unless you've learned it somehow). You might know the suns azimuth is 220 degrees, and the suns elevation is 60 degrees, and you might know a mirror is at position (-20, 42); now tell me, is that mirror correctly aligned with the sun? You don't know. Lets assume you have some very sophisticated heat measurements, and you know "with this heat level, there must be 2 mirrors correctly aligned". Now the question is, which two mirrors (out of 25 or more) are correctly aligned? One solution I considered was to approximate the correct "alignment function" using a neural network which would take the suns azimuth and elevation as input and output a large array with 2 values for each mirror which correspond to the 2 axis of each mirror. I'm not sure what the best training method is though.

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  • Should I use both WCF and ASP.NET Web API

    - by Mithir
    We already have a WCF API with basichttpbinding. Some of the calls have complex objects in both the response and request. We need to add RESTful abilities to the API. at first I tried adding a webHttp endpoint, but I got At most one body parameter can be serialized without wrapper elements If I made it Wrapped it wasn't pure as I need it to be. I got to read this, and this (which states "ASP.NET Web API is the new way to build RESTful service on .NET"). So my question is, should I make 2 APIs(2 different projects)? one for SOAP with WCF and one RESTful with ASP.NET Web API? is there anything wrong architecturally speaking with this approach?

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  • What are the downsides of implementing a singleton with Java's enum?

    - by irreputable
    Traditionally, a singleton is usually implemented as public class Foo1 { private static final Foo1 INSTANCE = new Foo1(); public static Foo1 getInstance(){ return INSTANCE; } private Foo1(){} public void doo(){ ... } } With Java's enum, we can implement a singleton as public enum Foo2 { INSTANCE; public void doo(){ ... } } As awesome as the 2nd version is, are there any downsides to it? (I gave it some thoughts and I'll answer my own question; hopefully you have better answers)

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  • How do I account for changed or forgotten tasks in an estimate?

    - by Andrew
    To handle task-level estimates and time reporting, I have been using (roughly) the technique that Steve McConnell describes in Chapter 10 of Software Estimation. Specifically, when the time comes for me to create task-level estimates (right before coding begins on a project), I determine the tasks at a fairly granular level so that, whenever possible, I have no tasks with a single-point, 50%-confidence estimate greater than four hours. That way, the task estimation process helps with constructing the software while helping me not to forget tasks during estimation. I come up with a range of hours possible for each task also, and using the statistical calculations that McConnell describes along with my historical accuracy data, I can generate estimates at other confidence levels when desired. I feel like this method has been working fairly well for me. We are required to put tasks and their estimates into TFS for tracking, so I use the estimates at the percentage of confidence I am told to use. I am unsure, however, what to do when I do forget a task, or I end up needing to do work that does not neatly fall within one of the tasks I estimated. Of course, trying to avoid this situation is best, but how do I account for forgotten/changed tasks? I want to have the best historical data I can to help me with future estimates, but right now, I basically am just calculating whether I made the 50%-confidence estimate and whether I made it inside the ranged estimate. I'll be happy to clarify what I'm asking if needed -- let me know what is unclear.

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  • What do I need to develop a PHP extension in lampp?

    - by Fernando Costa
    Actually I'm dealing with a trouble in my system, I have to delivery the system to clients and it was built in PHP, JS, ShellScript and SQL. I would like to encrypt the code or obfuscate it from eyes of others! Then someone from the community told me about build my own PHP extension, it sounds to me as a great idea, since it will not be with the main code of the system. But I have a problem doing this way, if a programmer get in the extensions and find it, all the hard work has gone. Then I'm here to ask again about this matter. What is the best way to hide my Business Logic from third parties? I know that has stuffs like IonCube, Zend Guard, and many others. But I'm looking something that I can build myself. Is PHP extension the right way to follow? Or some Half SaaS system, with dependencies (Business Logic) in a remote server? About the environment OS: Kernel Linux 2.6.37.1-1.2 - LAMPP (Apache 2.2, MySQL 5.5 PHP 5.3.8) In php generally the extension is located at /php/ext/ but in lampp I have no idea where it is, I just found a folder /opt/lampp/lib/php/extensions/ is that right place?

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  • Set Covering : Runtime hang\error at function call in c

    - by EnthuCrazy
    I am implementing a set covering application which uses cover function int cover(set *skill_list,set *player_list,set *covering) Suppose skill_set={a,b,c,d,e}, player_list={s1,s2,s3} then output coverin ={s1,s3} where say s1={a,b,c}, s3={d,e} and s2={b,d}. Now when I am calling this function it's hanging at run (set_cover.exe stopped working). Here is my cover function: typedef struct Spst_{ void *key; set *st; }Spst; int cover(set *skill_list,set *player_list,set *covering) { Liste *member,*max_member; Spst *subset; set *intersection; void **data; int max_size; set_init(covering); //to initialize set covering initially while(skill_list->size>0&&player_list->size>0) { max_size=0; for(member=player_list->head;member!=NULL;member=member->next) { if(set_intersection(intersection,((Spst *)(member->data))->st,skill_list)!=0) return -1; if(intersection->size>max_size) { max_member=member; max_size=intersection->size; } set_destroy(intersection); //at the end of iteration } if(max_size==0) //to check for no covering return -1; subset=(Spst *)max_member->data; //to insert max subset from play list to covering set set_inselem(covering,subset); for(member=(((Spst *)max_member->data)->st->head);member!=NULL;member=member->next) //to rem elem from skill list { data=(void **)member->data; set_remelem(skill_list,data); } set_remelem(player_list,(void **)subset); //to rem subset from set of subsets play list } if(skill_list->size>0) return -1; return 0; } Now assuming I have defined three set type sets(as stated above) and calling from main as cover(skills,subsets,covering);=> runtime hang Here Please give inputs on the missing link in this or the prerequisites for a proper call to this function type required. EDIT: Assume other functions used in cover are tested and working fine.

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  • Object behaviour or separate class?

    - by Andrew Stephens
    When it comes to OO database access you see two common approaches - the first is to provide a class (say "Customer") with methods such as Retrieve(), Update(), Delete(), etc. The other is to keep the Customer class fairly lightweight (essentially just properties) and perform the database access elsewhere, e.g. using a repository. This choice of approaches doesn't just apply to database access, it can crop up in many different OOD scenarios. So I was wondering if one way is preferable over the other (although I suspect the answer will be "it depends")! Another dev on our team argues that to be truly OO the class should be "self-contained", i.e. providing all the methods necessary to manipulate and interact with that object. I personally prefer the repository approach - I don't like bloating the Customer class with all that functionality, and I feel it results in cleaner code having it elsewhere, but I can't help thinking I'm seriously violating core OO concepts! And what about memory implications? If I retrieve thousands of Customer objects I'm assuming those with the data access methods will take up a lot more memory than the property-only objects?

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  • Survival rate of open source projects

    - by Shogoot
    I'm trying to write a paper on why or why not an open source project will have good odds for survival or not. I've found very few articles on the Internet on the topic or I'm just searching with the wrong terms. I've tried: "open source" survival "open source" success failure "open source" determinants for success So far i've only found this, which says some on the topic. So I turn to you my dear stackers! Help me find some arguments and articles that will throw some clarity on the subject.

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  • How to Detect Sprites in a SpriteSheet?

    - by IAE
    I'm currently writing a Sprite Sheet Unpacker such as Alferds Spritesheet Unpacker. Now, before this is sent to gamedev, this isn't necessarily about games. I would like to know how to detect a sprite within a spriitesheet, or more abstactly, a shape inside of an image. Given this sprite sheet: I want to detect and extract all individual sprites. I've followed the algorithm detailed in Alferd's Blog Post which goes like: Determine predominant color and dub it the BackgroundColor Iterate over each pixel and check ColorAtXY == BackgroundColor If false, we've found a sprite. Keep going right until we find a BackgroundColor again, backtrack one, go down and repeat until a BackgroundColor is reached. Create a box from location to ending location. Repeat this until all sprites are boxed up. Combined overlapping boxes (or within a very short distance) The resulting non-overlapping boxes should contain the sprite. This implementation is fine, especially for small sprite sheets. However, I find the performance too poor for larger sprite sheets and I would like to know what algorithms or techniques can be leveraged to increase the finding of sprites. A second implementation I considered, but have not tested yet, is to find the first pixel, then use a backtracking algorithm to find every connected pixel. This should find a contiguous sprite (breaks down if the sprite is something like an explosion where particles are no longer part of the main sprite). The cool thing is that I can immediately remove a detected sprite from the sprite sheet. Any other suggestions?

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  • Junit test bluej [closed]

    - by user1721929
    Can someone make a junit test of this? public class PersonName { int NumberNames(String wholename) { // store the name passed in to the method String testname=wholename; // initialize number of names found int numnames=0; // on each iteration remove one name while(testname.length()>numnames) { // take the "white space" from the beginning and end testname = testname.trim(); // determine the position of the first blank // .. end of the first word int posBlank= testname.indexOf(' '); // cut off word /** * it continues to the stop sign because that is where you commanded it to end */ testname=testname.substring(posBlank+1,testname.length()); // System.out.println(numnames); // System.out.println(testname); numnames++; System.out.println(testname); } return numnames; } public static void main(String args[]) { PersonName One= new PersonName(); System.out.println(One.NumberNames("Bobby")); System.out.println(One.NumberNames("Bobby Smith")); System.out.println(One.NumberNames("Bobby L. Smith")); System.out.println(One.NumberNames(" Bobby Paul Smith Jr. ")); } }

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  • Quantifying the value of refactoring in commercial terms

    - by Myles McDonnell
    Here is the classic scenario; Dev team build a prototype. Business mgmt like it and put it into production. Dev team now have to continue to deliver new features whilst at the same time pay the technical debt accrued when the code base was a prototype. My question is this (forgive me, it's rather open ended); how can the value of the refactoring work be quantified in commercial terms? As developers we can clearly understand and communicate the value in technical terms, such a the removal of code duplication, the simplification of an object model and so on. But this means little to an executive focussed on the commercial elements. What will mean something to this executive is the dev. team being able to deliver requirements at faster velocity. Just making this statement without any metrics that clearly quantify return on investment (increased velocity in return for resource allocated to refactoring) carries little weight. I'm interested to hear from anyone who has had experience, positive or negative, in relation to the above. ----------------- EDIT ---------------- Thanks for the responses so far, all of which I think are good. What I want to develop is a metric that proves (or disproves!) all of these statements. A report that ties velocity to refactoring and shows a positive effect.

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  • How to handle mutiple API calls using javascript/jquery

    - by James Privett
    I need to build a service that will call multiple API's at the same time and then output the results on the page (Think of how a price comparison site works for example). The idea being that as each API call completes the results are sent to the browser immediately and the page would get progressively bigger until all process are complete. Because these API calls may take several seconds each to return I would like to do this via javascript/jquery in order to create a better user experience. I have never done anything like this before using javascript/jquery so I was wondering if there was any frameworks/advice that anyone would be willing to share.

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  • Should I ditch AJAX in client side web development when I've got a web-socket open?

    - by jt0dd
    I was thinking that maybe I should forget AJAX (HTTP) requests when I've got a web-socket open between client and server, but I decided I should ask here to check if this could be a bad practice for some reason that I'm not thinking of. Once the socket is open, there's less syntax (often meaning simpler error handling) involved in passing information between client and server with Socket.io (just one example of a web-socket). Is there some obvious situation where a web-socket (Socket.io for example) isn't going to be capable of handling a functionality that an AJAX request could do easily?

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  • Dangers of two Jobs? Violating Company Policy?

    - by Stephen Furlani
    Hey, I'm working for a company full-time and myself part-time. I started learning the Mac OS/Cocoa/Objective-C at work, and then I got the "Brilliant Idea" that I'd like to program for the iPhone. The iPhone stuff is going well, but I'm earning money there because I'm applying skills I learned on the job. What is commonly considered violating company policy on things like this? Is there any danger of the company claiming 'ownership' of my side-job? If I leave the company, could they ask me to stop working at my side business? The company and my iphone stuff are in completely different "areas" but I'm still concerned. What can I do to make sure? What else should I be wary of? Has anyone run into bad stuff like this before? Thanks,

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  • Not getting paid for hours you've worked?

    - by Mercfh
    So I was reading from a previous thread about App vs Game Development Here Which brought me to this site: Clicky Alot of it talked about devs working something like 85 hours a week.....and not getting paid overtime, or anything. Just getting paid for the 40 hours.....Is this normal for most software companies? I mean where I work im only an entry level guy....but I get overtime, and Anything over 40 hours is considered this. But it got me thinking "Holy crap" I could never do that. My FREE time is important to me. But is this commonplace in most software companies? or...more a rarity to certain types (game development, etc) Cause it got me scared! Like I understand having to put some extra hours in for a project......but like 80! thats ridiculous.

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  • Reading Open Source Projects

    - by Hossein
    About my programming knowledge: I have basic knowledge of programming. Have never worked in a team project. Have done, only, a couple of small solo projects. Problem: Consider a typical open source project. We want to know about the project, so that we can contribute, test it, just out of curiosity, etc. The documentations do not describe the code architecture, usually, so RTFM(!) wouldn't apply here. They usually tend to describe how to use the software, not how it is designed. Mailing Lists in big projects are very crowded. Tens of e-mails are send in just an hour. also, following the mailing list to know the project is like understanding a film when you have arrived late, when half of the film is gone or even worse. Obviously, the code is not like a novel. So, you can't start from downloading the source code and just "start from the first page and so on"! Question: How should one understand open source project? What are the steps to do in an open source project, to understand how the whole thing works and get into speed with the "under the hood"?

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  • Immutable Method Java

    - by Chris Okyen
    In Java, there is the final keyword in lieu of the const keyword in c and c++. In the latter languages their is mutable and immutable methods such as stated in one answer by Johannes Schaub - litb the question how-many-and-which-are-the-uses-of-const-in-ce Use const to tell others methods won't change the logical state of this object. struct SmartPtr { int getCopies() const { return mCopiesMade; } }ptr1; ... int var = ptr.getCopies(); // returns mCopiesMade and is specified that to not modify objects state. How is this performed in Java?

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  • Is an 'if password == XXXXXXX' enough for minimum security?

    - by Morgan Herlocker
    If I create a login for an app that has middle to low security risk (in other words, its not a banking app or anything), is it acceptable for me to verify a password entered by the user by just saying something like: if(enteredPassword == verifiedPassword) SendToRestrictedArea(); else DisplayPasswordUnknownMessage(); It seems to easy to be effective, but I certainly would not mind if that was all that was required. Is a simple check on username/password combo enough? Update: The particular project happens to be a web service, the verification is entirely server side, and it is not open-source. Does the domain change how you would deal with this?

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  • Evaluating Scrum - is it okay to have people with multiple roles in a Scrum team?

    - by Wayne M
    I'm evaluating some Agile-style methodologies for possible introduction to my team. With Scrum, is it allowable to have the same person perform multiple roles? We have a small team of four developers and a web designer; we don't really have a lead (I fulfill this role), QA testers or business analysts, and all of our development tasks come from the CIO. Automated testing is seen as a total waste of time, and everything focuses on speed and not quality. What will happen is the CIO will come up with a development task (whether a feature or a bug) and give it to a developer (not to the whole team, to an individual, often in private or out of the blue) who is then expected to get it completed. The CIO doesn't gather requirements beyond the initial idea (and this has bitten us before as we'll implement something only to find out that none of the end users can use the feature, because they weren't consulted or even informed about it before we developed it, and in a panic we'll be told to revert the change) but requires say in/approval of everything that we do. First things first, is a Scrum style something to consider to introduce some standards and practices? From reading, Scrum seems to rely on a bit more trust and communication and focuses more on project management than on development, which is something we are completely devoid of as we don't have any semblance of project management at present. Second, if it can work is it unreasonable for someone, let's say myself, to act as both ScrumMaster and a developer? Or for a developer to also be the Product Owner (although chances are this will be the CIO, who isn't a developer)? I realize the Scrum Master and the Product Owner should be different people but at the same time I don't think we have anyone who has the qualities of a Product Owner (chances are it would turn into a "I need all these stories, I don't care how but get it done" type of deal and/or any freeze would be unfrozen on a whim). It seems to me that I might need to pick and choose pieces of Scrum/XP/Lean to compensate for how things are done currently, as it's highly unlikely that the mentality can be changed; for instance Pair Programming would never fly (seen as a waste, you get half the tasks done if you need two people for everything), TDD would be a hard sell, but short cycles would be welcomed.

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  • Lending epub files for limited time to users

    - by JP Hellemons
    I am looking for components to build a digital library who lends people epub (ebooks) for about a week. It's like a digital version of the offline old public library. Now I have found several flash (pdf) file streaming solutions. But that would require an active internet link. And like the public library, you are able to take your books to the beach or pool on holiday abroad where you have no connection. So streaming is no option. The other file restriction method I have found was DRM, but that would require a really expensive license of Adobe Content Server 4 which is not suitable for my little hobby project. But it seems that adobe content server and Adobe Digital Editions is the only option at the moment. Or are there open source alternatives?

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  • Javascript Rookie Question: Define Variables Inline

    - by Dylan Kinnett
    I'm proficient with HTML and CSS but I'm still pretty shaky when it comes to Javascript. That said, I've been able to build a site using the Internet Archive Book Reader, which relies on reader.js Here's a copy of one of my versions of reader.js https://gist.github.com/dylan-k/ed4efed2384e221d46cc It's a good site, but I find I have to repeat things a lot. Basically, I have one copy of reader.js for every page/book featured on the site. It seems there must be a better way. I re-use the script, making copies, just so that I can change lines 28, 80, 83, 84. Is there a way I could include just one copy of reader.js and then use a <script> tag to define these 4 lines for the individual pages?

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